"We are passing through something more than a period of disappointing economic growth and increasing political polarization. What’s happening is more powerful: the collapse of 'entitlement.' By this, I do not mean primarily cuts in specific government benefits, most prominently Social Security, but the demise of a broader mind-set — attitudes and beliefs — that, in one form or another, has gripped Americans since the 1960s. The breakdown of these ideas has rattled us psychologically as well as politically and economically."